Asimov’s, February 2009

With stories whose plots unfold in deserts, mountains, a polar moonscape, a resort simulacra of Mars, underwater, and in that volcanic prehuman tropic which Steven Utley always returns to, the February 2009 issue of Asimov’s is atmospheric and engrossing—with some stories more vivid than others.

In almost six months of reviewing this magazine, I’ve read some really remarkable work. But this is the first time that what I’ve read in Asimov’s has wriggled its way into my dreams, where I found myself knee-deep in the freezing darkness of “The Coldest War.” Matthew Johnson (also the author of “Lagos,” a standout story which appeared in the August 2008 issue) has now twice proven himself to be a master of setting. His characters may not always have memorable personalities, but the worlds they move in never fail to be solid and interesting. Much of the power of this piece is in the pervasive atmosphere of isolation, danger, and routine—heatlocks, sub-zero temperatures, camouflage suits, flares, patrols—which characterizes the most evocative hard SF about people in space:

Flexing the suit’s stiff fingers, Stan opened the gun locker, picked up his Ross Polar III and slung it over his shoulder. He patted his hip pocket to make sure the flare pistol was there and then followed the curve of the heat baffle, emerging halfway up the steep slope that led from the cliff on which Base Hearn sat to the flat top of the island where the flare station was.

On rereading, I find a few moments grate; at some points, the exposition is a little sloppy, and the sheer Jack London 19th-century masculinity of the premise gets a bit overwhelming—comments about how “even the Inuit” found the island uninhabitable, how the narrator and his coworker had been “detailed from the Ranger base at Alert when no Inuit had been found willing to do it”—but these are nitpicks. Read this story and you will feel cold and alone in a world where the strategic significance of islands in the once perpetually frozen Northwest Passage causes conflict between historically placid nations (the title is clever too). Honestly, the rationale for his story is unimportant in the final analysis: Johnson shows his craft in the masterful claustrophobia, paranoia, and formless threat with which he surrounds protagonist and reader, alone in the dark trying to survive while assailed by faceless enemies and a hostile environment.

A haunting setting makes Johnson’s suspenseful story of conflict memorable, but characters are Carol Emshwiller’s strength in “The Bird Painter In Time Of War.” The artist of her title (who is, disappointingly to this reader, male—only one sentence reveals his enticingly unspecified gender) is a sensitive, observant, and psychologically realistic narrator. The battlefield he negotiates may be in some mountainous region of Eastern Europe, although I don’t know enough about birds or names to tell, and it doesn’t matter that much. His nomadic life at the margins of human society, for all its contemporary characteristics—he once was a war correspondent, the opposing armies use guns and engage in unpicturesque sorts of pillaging—is clouded with a haze of fairytale in its single-mindedness and simplicity. His way of seeing, the depth of his emotions, his character arc, and his sense of reality are the most important elements. Perhaps we’ve seen vulnerable, artistic male characters before who resemble him, but Emshwiller refreshingly spares him their usual angst. This is a story about nonverbal communication and the comfort animals (human or otherwise) can share with one another, and its simply presented sentimental moments are not maudlin. Whatever familiar plot points she uses, she uses them well, demonstrating her craft in skillful simplicity. I usually hate these sorts of stories, interesting characters aside, but I found myself re-reading this one with pleasure.

A simple premise is also “The Point” of Steven Utley’s latest prehistoric outing, peopled by dueling scientists. Although his punch line is a little confusing, the psychological conflict at the core of this story is amusing, and a larger agenda suggested by his mouthpiece fails to drain all the enjoyment out of what would otherwise become a preachy Saturday morning cartoon.

Colin P. Davies’s “Certainty Principle” unfortunately falls short of that mark in its last few paragraphs or so. Although he poses some interesting moral dilemmas, we’ve seen them all before, and I can’t say I think much of his title. John Hale, his protagonist, is a dishonorably discharged ex-navy man incognito at a Mars-themed resort, under threat from unknown adversaries, obsessing over his ex-wife, and struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. He reads as hollow as his surroundings. I don’t know how many stories I’ve read starring psychologically damaged men who experience moments of truth as their lives are falling apart, but I know there have been a lot of them. Davies does weave Hales’s military and personal failures together well, however, and slaps a fun little twist into the end of his tale.

With a title that makes me groan and characters that make me smirk, Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling’s “Colliding Branes” is more than the sum of its parts. I’ll admit to having read far more Rucker than Sterling, but apart from a few moments near the end, I found myself able to resist the impulse to reflexively label its sections by author, which is definitely a sign of a successful, if hardly seamless, collaboration. I’ll admit that I have to resist identifying Rabbiteen as Rucker’s character and Angelo as Sterling’s based on their interests and areas of expertise, though. Angelo and Rabbiteen are two hipster Internet pen pals attempting to prepare for the end of the universe, which they heralded to the “sheeplike American public” through their blogs—his on policy and hers on physics. They meet up in the flesh for the first time and plan to ring in the end of time by screwing in the desert near Area 52 (”‘Wow,’ […] ‘That’s one digit higher than 51′”) where they may find a free ticket out of the end of time. This one is amusing, a bit over the top in a delightfully Ruckerish way, something like a satire of every silly disaster story—how can there be anything more serious than the apocalypse, or more ridiculously trendified than two of the world’s self-proclaimed “foremost citizen journalists” trying to fend off nihilism with every “yoctosecond” of immaturity and self-importance left to them. The cosmology of Realware meets the blogosphere, and the results are, if not profound or even quite sensible, at least diverting.

I adored Judith Berman’s novel Bear Daughter, but while the cultures that inspired that world were familiar to me, her novella “Pelago” (which I heard her read an earlier version of at Pandemonium over a year ago) takes me into unfamiliar waters. The creepy living chair which was the only element that remained vivid in my memory from the reading has since been upstaged by more active tentacled horrors, however. Something about the way in which she unfolds her far-fetched technologies makes them more believable than a less skillful writer could have made them: I find myself thinking of Charles Stross, in whose Glasshouse I encountered some very weird science that he still managed to make intelligible, although he engaged in more hand-waving there, I think, than she does here. Ari, Berman’s protagonist, has gotten onto her family’s old spaceship somehow. The pirates that murdered them and took it do not know who she is, and her attempts to find out as much as she can and seize her revenge are complicated by the necessity of assisting them with a mission to recapture one of their bosses’ marooned functionaries, who has hidden himself on the derelict to which he was confined. I’m thankful that I found her work rewarding and was lucky enough to go to that reading, otherwise I might have gotten quickly frustrated with this dense, ambitious, complex, far future hard SF piece thick with slimily biological tech and dialogue in a stewy patois spattered with outhouse expletives. Yes, hard SF purists might not agree with me for one nitpicky reason or another, but every technological element here, however semi-magical it sounds, also has a clear enough scientific grounding that even a semi-scientifically literate educated English major like myself can see it. Berman takes nothing for granted, solving the gravity problem on her spaceships with sticky floors and bristle-soled boots that keep her characters anchored. Some seedships also apparently spin enough to provide some additional pull, although she suggests her title ship’s size with its attractive force:

[…]the stray locks of his hair settled downwards. Pelago might not have spin, but it was massive enough to impart a bit of weight to them—hardly enough to notice without such cues.

The patois her pirates speak turns me off, but I think I understand why she employs it: for the challenge, for the novelty, to remind us always how festeringly unpleasant they are, especially their inhumanly handsome captain, Nuna, and perhaps most importantly to give us a future where everyone doesn’t speak damned Federation standard. I’m not sure yet if her experiment is a success, but it is sure to attract considerable comment, and I felt my efforts acclimating to it were well spent. I have been taught an overdue lesson in patience: yes, there has to be payoff when you make your readers work, whether you’re Anthony Burgess, Zora Neale Hurston, or William Shakespeare, and if you haven’t proven yourself to a lot of them yet, getting them to reach for you will be a delicate balancing act. But reaching in the first place, in case you might encounter something unexpectedly rewarding…that’s a small gamble, and sometimes one worth making. I’ll be interested to hear what folks unfamiliar with her prior work have to say; all I can tell you is what I see, and although I don’t know Berman personally, I’m far from a disinterested observer.